ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to examine the argument that privileges human rights. This argument comes as part of a wider case in the literature to rethink the nature and dynamics of democratic politics in the face of the challenges posed to it by the intensification of processes of globalisation, the rise of transnational migration and the salience of the human rights discourse. Underpinning this argument is the twofold idea that democracy is too limited and too exclusive in the context of an interconnected world in which calls for political, legal and ethnic inclusion abound. To bring democracy thus into line with current developments, it is argued that we need to dissociate it from dynamics of national and territorial exclusion. For such dynamics no longer resonate in a setting different to the one within which democracy was originally advanced. In this setting, it is the prospect of universal democracy, global or transnational, which appears relevant and compelling.
